Air: Baking’s Key Variable : Mechanical Leaveners (part 2) - Egg Whites - Meringue Cookies & Chocolate Port Cake

Meringue Cookies

To make meringue cookies, start with either egg-white meringue recipe. Optionally fold into the meringue whatever ingredients you’d like—ground almonds, chocolate chips, dried fruit, cocoa powder.

Using a spoon or piping bag, portion the meringue onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake in an oven preheated to 200°F / 95°C for a few hours, until they freely come off the parchment paper.

No piping bag? No problem. Put your filling in a large resealable bag and snip off one of the corners. You can use Italian meringue as a topping on desserts as well.

Chocolate Port Cake

One of the great things about this chocolate port cake—besides the chocolate and the port—is the recipe’s wide error tolerances. Most foam cakes—those cakes that rely on a foam to provide the air—are very light (think angel food cake). The reason this recipe is so forgiving is that it uses a foam without trying to achieve the same lightness.

You’ll need a small saucepan, two clean bowls, a whisk, and a round baking pan or springform pan, 6–8″ / 15–20 cm.

In the saucepan (over a burner set to low heat), melt and mix together, but do not boil:

½ cup (125g) port (either tawny or ruby)

½ cup (114g) butter

Once butter is melted, turn off heat, remove pan from burner, and add:

3 oz (85g) bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces to facilitate melting

Leave the chocolate to melt in the port/butter mixture.

In two bowls, separate:

4 large (240g) eggs

Make sure to use a clean glass or metal bowl for the egg whites, and be careful not to get any egg yolk into the whites.

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks.

In the bowl with the egg yolks, add:

1 cup (195g) granulated sugar

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until thoroughly combined. The yolks and sugar should become a slightly lighter yellow after whisking for a minute or so. Pour the chocolate mixture into the egg yolk/sugar mixture and whisk to thoroughly combine.

Using a flat wooden spoon or flat spatula, add to the chocolate mixture and fold in (but do not overstir!):

¾ cup (100g) all-purpose flour

Then fold in the egg whites in thirds. That is, transfer about a third of the whisked egg whites into the chocolate mixture, mix together, and then repeat twice more. Don’t worry about getting the whites perfectly incorporated, although the batter should be relatively well mixed together.

Grease your cake pan with butter and line the bottom with parchment paper, so as to make removing the cake from the pan easier. Transfer the mix to the cake pan and bake in an oven preheated to 350°F / 175°C until a toothpick or knife, when poked into the center, comes out clean, around 30 minutes.

Let cool for at least 10 to 15 minutes, until the edges have pulled away from the sides, then remove from pan. Dust with powdered sugar (you can use a strainer for this: place a few spoonfuls of powdered sugar in the strainer and then jog it with your hand above the cake).

Note

• When working with chocolate in baking, don’t just substitute, say, 80% bittersweet chocolate for a semisweet bar. In addition to differences in sugar, the two types of chocolate have different quantities of cocoa fat, and recipes that rely on the fat level will need to be adjusted accordingly.

Optimal Cake-Cutting Algorithm for N People^[4]

If you grew up with a brother or sister, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the technique for avoiding fights when splitting food: one person divides it, and the other person chooses. (“You can halve your cake, and eat it, too!”) But what to do if you have more than one brother or sister?

There is a solution, but it’s a bit more involved. Here’s the algorithm for cutting a round cake for N people. It’s not perfect—don’t use this for negotiating land divisions after minor land wars—but when it comes to a table of kids and a large chocolate cake, it’ll probably work.

Only one person actually does any cake-cutting, and that person can either be a cake-eater or just a referee. Start with the cake in front of you, along with a knife and N plates. Proceed as follows:

One of the nice things about this protocol (a protocol is similar to an algorithm, but allows for accepting user input after being started) is that it allows people who for whatever crazy reason want small slices to do so, and gets them out of the way at the beginning, meaning if somebody else wants a larger slice than an equal N division would allow, they get more cake and can eat it, too.

If someone is being greedy and wants a too-big piece, they’ll end up getting the last slice—which will normally be the largest slice. If two or more people end up being greedy, though, they could allow the referee to reach the end of the cake by never calling stop, in which case I suggest eating the cake yourself. There’s no guarantee that this protocol will satisfy everyone—just that the honest actors are protected from the dishonest ones.